What is a Bounce?
A bounced address is an email address that, when sent an email, returns as inactive meaning the recipient server sends return message stating that the inbox or domain no longer exists.
ISPs and Bounce Rates
ISPs have set thresholds for bounces, unsubscribes, and abuse complaints that ESPs like TinyLetter, are required to enforce. If these thresholds are exceeded, the account may face suspension.
Thresholds fluctuate throughout the year based on the incoming send volume to a respective ISP's email domain. Because thresholds are in relative flux, and to avoid inadvertently assisting spammers, ISPs do not publicly release their threshold schedules. If you're taking proper steps to subscribe people to your list and practicing clean list-keeping, you shouldn't need to worry about exceeding these limits.
How to Reduce Bounce Rates
High bounce rates are often caused by lists that have gone stale, or addresses that were improperly entered or imported. Before importing your list into TinyLetter, if you're unsure of how the email address will fare when they're sent their first email using TinyLetter, we highly recommend taking the time to reconfirm the list instead of importing it directly into the account.
TinyLetter signup forms come standard with a double opt-in process. Through this process, those signing up will need to confirm their subscription before being added to the list. This is a great feature since, when confirming their subscription, they're also confirming their email address is active before they are added to the account.
If you're not using the signup forms TinyLetter provides, we recommend at least establishing a double opt-in process for whatever list collection method you are using to prevent inactive (bounced) email addresses from being added to your list and thereby helping prevent the possibility of a high bounce rate.
Does TinyLetter Manage my Bounces?
Yes. After you send with Tinyletter, we remove undeliverable, bounced addresses from your list. To prevent accidental imports of these undeliverable addresses in the future, we remove them from the list. TinyLetter handles all of this behind the scenes with no extra work from you required. If you would like to view or export bounced addresses, we'd recommend looking into MailChimp.